We would like to take you on a little journey back in synthesizer sound history. In the second half of the 1980s the small German company Waldorf Electronics teamed up with the creative innovator Wolfgang Palm from formerly PPG, the company that brought wavetable synthesis on the map for a lot of composers and performers.
At the time Palm's Wave instruments could create amazing sounds not found anywhere else. Palm condensed his experience and knowledge into one chip that was used in the very successful Waldorf Microwave rack synthesizer, released in 1989 and re-released this year as a software plugin by the Waldorf Music company. The Microwave offers very interesting, punchy and vivid sounds based on the digital-analog hybrids of the PPG legacy. One issue with the machine was obvious to see though. There are no realtime controls on board for sound shaping.
Shortly after the release of the new all DSP based Microwave 2 follower in 1997 Waldorf created one of the finest wavetable synths at the time, the Microwave XT which came with 44 rotary controllers that allow for direct access to the nucleus of a sound. It's still an interesting synthesizer today with lots of creative possibilities.
The Ambient & Atmospheres sound set for the Waldorf Microwave XT synthesizer series was originally programmed by Christian Halten in 1999/2000 and officially released in 2001 by the former Waldorf Electronics company. When it came out it was one of the four official sound sets distributed by Waldorf. With 128 original single sounds, 16 bonus and 16 multi sounds it offers an extensive palette of dynamically playable wavetable goodness especially for film score, ambient and electronic music productions. A full list of these retro tones can be found in this document.
For the 25th anniversary we decided to offer the best of these iconic sounds as newly produced sample sets to users of the newer generation instruments Korg wavestate and modwave, Sequential Prophet X, Yamaha Montage M, Native Instruments Kontakt and, of course, the Waldorf Quantum and Iridium synthesizers.
The Ambient & Atmospheres sample set is in production right now and will be available for purchase in December from the SKYLIFE store. Of course, the original sysex file for the Microwave II/XT/XTk/PC is included in the package as well.